


(in, 2, 3, 4) -- [hold] -- (out, 2, 3, 4)

by nimiumcaelo



Series: Flowers Grow Where the Garden Meets the Wood [5]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, POV Mike Wheeler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 07:32:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13429920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimiumcaelo/pseuds/nimiumcaelo
Summary: "Everywhere I go the sun comes shining through.Everyone I know is sure it shines for you.Even in my dreams I look into your eyes,Suddenly it seems I've found a paradise.Everywhere I go the sun comes shining through."-- Lennon/McCartney





	(in, 2, 3, 4) -- [hold] -- (out, 2, 3, 4)

People tell you to breathe when they want you grounded. They want you to come back to yourself; they want you to exist properly, not float away on strings of half-formed thoughts and imaginations. You breathe in air so that it can’t sweep under your feet and carry you off.

 

You breathe steadily and smooth your fingertips along the dirt-stained picnic blanket beneath you. He’s with you and he’s talking and you can almost see him bump up and down off the ground as the breath leaves him and then rushes back in with excitement. He’s grinning and laughing and you’re drugged with something your mother warned you about because you can feel the muscle movements of his cheeks pinching and pulling at the planes of your heart.

 

You smile back at him. There’s a shimmering trail of golden leftover sunshine that follows his fingertips through the air like sparklers in the night air. Can’t he feel the heat, prickling and burning his insides, radiating from inside him and bursting out wherever it can? You almost flinch away when he bumps against you as he shifts his position – how were you to know the light would be warm as a human body, not hot as a boiling volcano?

 

You tell him something personal and sweet and flickering with the shadows where you hide when you feel insecure. You tell him something that makes his already smiling face soften and you can almost feel the leaking wonder and awe and how is that expression directed at you when you are so much less beautiful than him? You tell him something that makes him falter – only for a moment – then lean forward to mumble something to you.

 

_Do you really mean that?_

 

Could you lie to him? Yes. Have you lied to him? Yes. Would you do it again, if you thought it would benefit him? Yes.

 

Were you lying about that? 

 

How could you?

 

_Yes._

 

His tendrils of fawn eyes and rabbit noses reach out and he hugs you. He’s so secretly strong, like a tender shoot off a branch, that you are startled; you didn’t expect him to be able to handle you.

 

You can feel his breath softly press a bruise against your neck and shoulder. You try to breathe, to stay down on the ground – with him. Expanding, contracting – inhaling, exhaling – your shoulders rise and fall.

 

He pulls back and looks at you. You forget to keep yourself on the ground and flicker up for a moment, rising about three inches off the dirty blanket beneath you.

 

You don’t notice that he’s risen, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> \- M


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